Aibo comes complete with flapping ears and its eyes, made of an OLED light-emitting display, can show various emotions. Additional features include touch sensors on its head, chin and back so you can pet it. It also has a camera on its nose to help it recognize family members.

The owner can play with the pet remotely via smartphone and even teach it tricks from the office for the faithful hound to perform when its “master” gets home. However, the dog does not speak human languages or perform tasks such as turning a light on. According to Sony’s Izumi Kawanishi who is in charge of the project, that is not the point of the product.

It builds up a “character” by interacting with people and while not always submissive, it is friendly towards those who are kind to it. What the machine “learns” is stored in the cloud so its “character” can be preserved even in the event of hardware damage.